Clinton and China: How Promise Self-Destructed

Published: May 29, 1994

WASHINGTON, May 28—
Warren Christopher was in China, and the President was furious.

The Secretary of State's high-profile trip in March was supposed to have been the capstone of the Administration's strategy of working intensively with Beijing to resolve their dispute over human rights. Instead, things were getting worse by the day. Mr. Christopher was trading insults with the Chinese authorities, who were preoccupied with their annual National People's Congress, and he was facing harsh criticism from the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing.

As President Clinton watched his China policy heading over a cliff, he exploded in front of aides in the Oval Office, "What the hell is Chris doing there now?"

The President's outburst, say aides, reflected his frustration not only with his Secretary of State but also with a policy that was supposed to have been an effortless success but was turning into a diplomatic tar baby.

In the end, Mr. Clinton would renew China's trade privileges and abandon an agonizing annual ritual of linking renewal of trade benefits to improvements in Beijing's human rights performance. The story of how he got there, reconstructed in interviews with senior Administration officials, lawmakers and business and human rights leaders, is a tale of broken campaign promises and fierce inter-agency battles, secret diplomacy and 11th-hour indecision.

Mr. Clinton decided on the central issue of extending the trade benefits months before his announcement on Thursday, though he was still changing his mind about the details until the final moment. He called former President Jimmy Carter with a last-minute offer for him to head an independent blue-ribbon human rights panel recommended by Mr. Christopher that would press China to make more progress. Mr. Carter not only said no, he advised Mr. Clinton to scrap the idea, saying it would not be taken seriously by human rights organizations.

Mr. Clinton discarded it just before heading to the White House briefing room to make his announcement. The Prelude Campaign Promise And an Order

When Mr. Clinton began his Presidential campaign, his views on China were shaped as much by immediate political needs as by geopolitical strategy. The Senate majority leader, George J. Mitchell of Maine, and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. favored using the threat of withdrawing "most-favored- nation" benefits from China if it did not improve its human rights record. Candidate Clinton, who needed their support to win the Democratic Party nomination, was not about to contradict them.

When it came time for the new President to draw up his policy, Senator Mitchell and his allies in Congress threatened to pass legislation withdrawing China's trade benefits if Beijing did not do more to ease repression. To head off such a law, with its inherent inflexibility, Mr. Clinton asked his aides to draft an executive order that would mollify the Democrats in Congress but remain vague enough to allow the President to change course a year later.

With no senior member of the Administration opposing the idea, Mr. Clinton signed Presidential Executive Order 12850 at the White House on May 28, 1993. It renewed China's trade benefits for another year but said China must meet two "mandatory" conditions to win another extension in June 1994: end restrictions on emigration by close family members of dissidents and comply with a 1992 agreement banning the export of prison-labor products to the United States. China was also supposed to make "overall, significant progress" on a number of other issues, ranging from easing the crackdown on Tibet to accounting for political prisoners.

Chinese dissidents, liberal Democrats, conservative Republicans, Asia Watch, members of the U.S.-China Business Council and even a representative of Tibet's leadership gathered at the White House for the signing of the order, which was widely hailed as a masterful solution.

But it was a false consensus, because each side saw in the executive order what it wanted to see. The liberal Democrats thought the directive had finally put some muscle into the trade threat, and the business sector thought that it was ambiguous enough finally to eviscerate the trade threat. Policy Shift 'Downward Spiral' Forces a Change

China was not impressed, and over the next few months, the relationship with the United States deteriorated. The Chinese loaded chemicals for making weapons on a freighter headed for Iran, shipped technology for M-11 missiles to Pakistan in violation of an international missile agreement and rejected pleas from the Clinton Administration to cancel a long-scheduled underground nuclear test.

As it became apparent that the executive order was not having its desired effect and that the threat to revoke China's trade benefits might actually have to be carried out, the American business sector mobilized.

"We consistently sent the President and his advisers letters and short papers arguing that extending trade with China was critical for helping the economy and jobs," said Jerry Jasinowski, president of the National Association of Manufacturers. "That was argument No. 1. There was a subordinate argument -- that it would also advance human rights."